Help Slate Dig Deeper Into Gun Deaths in America

A crowdsourced analysis of the 10,000-plus people killed by guns since Newtown.

Since we published our interactive on the number of gun deaths in America since Newtown, hundreds of readers have asked how they can help—and hundreds more have asked for a more detailed parsing of the data. After all, the lesson of this project is that we simply don’t know enough about the circumstances of America’s deaths by gun. As we approach the one-year anniversary of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary, how can we learn more?

Well, now you can help. Sorting through the 10,000-plus gun deaths reported by the media in the United States since Dec. 14 would be more than any one person could accomplish, but through the power of Slatereaders and crowdsourcing, we can crunch the data very efficiently. Just as the crowdsourced GalaxyZoo project has successfully classified hundreds of thousands of deep-space galaxies through the help of individual visitors, so we hope to classify thousands of gun deaths. Using our interactive below, please classify a death as murder, suicide, accident, shot by law enforcement, shot by civilian in self-defense, or other/unclear. We’ll use a consensus of votes on each death to classify it.

Classify one death, or two, or 10, or more. Every bit helps paint a clearer picture of the toll guns take on American lives.